HiNaBN fragment: Keep You Better
"A preservative is a naturally occurring or synthetic substance that is added to products such as foods, pharmaceuticals, paints, biological samples, wood, etc. to prevent decomposition by microbial growth or by undesirable chemical changes."
(Wikipedia)
{…} sets the bag down on the kitchen counter and pulls off his gloves. He gets a pair of thinner, rubber ones from the cupboard under the sink and is putting them on when the bag tilts. A head of lettuce rolls across the counter, but thankfully misses the floor and lands in the sink instead. It leaves a moist trail in its wake. He wipes it off, dumps the other contents of the bag after the lettuce, shakes the bag out and folds it before surveying the prize.
Two heads of lettuce, a box of peaches, a handful of figs and half a bag of yellow carrots whose colour melts into an odd shade of green at one end. Half of the peaches have soft, fuzzy spots, the figs are sort of shrivelled and the lettuce needed a wash two days ago, but it's not a bad harvest for a night of dumpster-diving.
Hanna never buys fresh vegetables and only rarely buys fresh fruit. He's not sure he can fault his friend for that; vegetables and fruit are expensive and the speed at which Hanna burns off energy means he needs to get it at higher concentrations. He also thinks that Hanna desperately needs to put on some weight. Even then, subsisting mostly on potatoes and candy can't be good for you. He sometimes browses health magazines at the store where Hanna works while waiting for him to get off shift, and he's pretty sure that all the experts agree that strawberry marshmallows don't count as Fruit Group servings, no matter what Hanna says.
He peels off slimy top leaves and rinses one lettuce head before setting it on a dish towel. The rest of the cleaned-up loot goes around it. A cutting board, a knife and a bowl are set out while water drips from them and disappears into the fabric. He dabs the rest away with a corner of the towel and takes the rubber gloves off.
Contrary to what people might expect, he doesn't really mind touching food with his bare hands once the spoiled parts are taken care off. The lettuce and the carrots are firm and the peaches are soft but smooth when he inspects them, one by one. As long as he doesn't get any pulp between his stitches, it's fine. Sometimes something even leaves a barely perceptible substance on his hands, which he's found will help keep his skin better. Fruit and vegetables really are good for you in more ways than one. They have all sorts of thing living people need – vitamins, enzymes, antioxidants, and preservatives.
There is something a little off about that list, so he takes a mental tally while cutting the figs in half. Vitamins are good for regeneration, check. Enzymes are good for digestion, check. Antioxidants prevent cellular damage, check. Preservatives, however, are good for keeping things fresh past their expiration date. That one is the odd one out. Living things regenerate and digest and take damage from free radicals, but they do not need to be kept fresh because they have not, by definition, yet expired.
Much of what he forages from grocery store dumpsters is coated with preservatives. It makes sense, considering how long the oranges and the avocados stay on the shelves before they end up in Hanna's kitchen. The thin film that keeps them from decomposing is also beneficial for the sentient corpse who handles them and isn't terribly excited about rot. But he's well past his expiration date and living things don't exactly thrive on coming into close contact with preservatives on a regular basis, do they? He puts the last fig down and looks at his hand. Tiny, see-through specks glitter on the pads of his fingers. They look harmless enough, a bit like dried sun lotion or moisturiser. He has a brief urge to wipe them onto his neck.
Come to think of it, he probably is full of preservatives to begin with, and even without the food and the cooking, he comes into close contact with Hanna on a regular basis.
He hopes he hasn't done Hanna any unwitting damage. Well, more damage than Hanna does to himself, but that isn't really fair grounds for comparison, especially with Hanna's track record. Maybe he should make a point of wearing the rubber gloves and walking to the farmers' market more often, even if the gloves are awkward and the market is two districts away and the dumpsters there mostly have greens in them. Hanna loathes greens, to the point where he sometimes scoots back if he unexpectedly finds them on his plate, but it's not impossible to get him to eat them. It's easier to do something about what Hanna puts in his mouth than it is to do something about what he runs headlong into, or what he might do to himself with all that recklessness and magic.
Or already has done.
It's not something he likes to dwell on. He and the rest of the supernatural entourage attracted to the detective are proof enough that luck does run out eventually, that there is trouble too big to escape from unscathed, and that not everything that looks lively is necessarily alive. Hanna is like a center of gravity, pulling all that towards himself like a magnet. If Hanna does come to a bad end – which he's determined not to let happen – it's much more likely that it will be in spite of his partner's efforts than because of them. Sometimes he entertains the idle thought that should he peel back the skin on Hanna's mutilated chest, underneath it, etched into Hanna's ribcage, he would find a huge glowing rune that summons what is Hanna's idea of awesome adventure and a lot of other people's idea of mortal peril.
He takes the towel and cleans the specks of preservative carefully off his fingers. Then he tears the salad up, gingerly holds the figs while he carves out their insides, and hesitates on the carrots for a moment before deciding to cut them into long, thin ribbons that, once cooked, will hopefully look a bit like noodles. In a couple of hours, Hanna will bound through the door, grab the plate his partner will present him with and shove in the first mouthful. before realising that what he thought were noodles are, in fact, not noodles. Seeing the look on Hanna's face, his partner will ask if there's something wrong with the food, and Hanna will swallow the carrots with difficulty, grin, say no, of course not, it's reeeally goood and you made it for me while I was away, that is so nice! He'll finish the whole plate and even compliment it some more, even though he'll look like he's eating raw squid. After that, his partner will suddenly remember that there are also potatoes in the oven, and the vileness of the vegetable salad will promptly be forgotten.
It might be a little devious, but Hanna is looking less anaemic nowadays and the dark circles around his eyes are getting lighter. Preservatives may not be very good for living things, but if you overlook the parts where Hanna vomits blood, faints or gets beaten up, every sign suggests that he is thriving. Perhaps vitamins, enzymes and antioxidants with preservatives are better than no vitamins, enzymes or antioxidants at all.
And hey, at least he will keep better.